


Advent Tales 2013

by WonderstruckGuardian



Series: Candle, Candle, Burning Bright [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Inter-dimensional dragon fire, Jellybean Geysers, Random portals, Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, happy holidays!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25170559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderstruckGuardian/pseuds/WonderstruckGuardian
Summary: There is only week left until Christmas in 2013, and the Guardians are definitely celebrating Advent this year. Mostly so they don't have to go through the insane activities Sandy put them through in an attempt to 'celebrate' Advent last year. A few issues  arise when time-travelling visitors suddenly start appearing around the world...but it's nothing the Guardians can't handle, right?
Series: Candle, Candle, Burning Bright [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623967
Kudos: 3





	1. Another Eventful Advent...and Bunny’s Glowing Gauntlets

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This officially the second installment of Advent Tales. I've just been extremely lazy, and never edited or posted it anywhere before now. (I know, I know, it's years late. But hey, it's 2020, and I've recently had more time than ever to deal with old stories.) This is a crossover with characters from the new Star Trek movies, but could technically apply to TOS as well if you want...
> 
> (If you've read Advent Tales 2014 already, this story explains how Jack knows the main bridge crew of the USS Enterprise. Just assume that he told Jamie all about it later, and that's how Jamie knows them in 2014.)
> 
> The Advent poem is still not mine, and neither are any of the characters you recognize. Hope this story brings you laughs in this strange, difficult time.   
> Stay safe, everyone!

**_Candle, candle, burning bright,_ **

**_share with us your golden light;_ **

**_  
The first light of Advent is the light of stones,_ **

**_stones that make crystals, seashells, and our bones;_ **

_**The** _ **_second light of Advent is light of plants, green plants that grow, and seed,  
and in the breezes dance;_ **

**_  
The third light of Advent is for animals of the Earth, great and small, steadily they live,  
and bring the soul to birth;_ **

**_  
The fourth light of Advent is the light of Humanity, those who can choose to bring goodness_ **

**_to every living thing._ **

* * *

There was only one week left until Christmas, and the Guardians definitely celebrating Advent this year. Mostly so they didn’t have to go through the insane treasure hunt and all the other things Sandy had done to them in an attempt to ‘celebrate’ Advent last year.

Bunny had just dragged North over to the chairs by the fireplace in the Globe Room for at least five minutes of relaxation. It was generally agreed among the other Guardians that North needed a break, because he was Christmas. All five Guardians had just settled down and were beginning to talk about stories from last year’s memorable Advent when they heard an almighty crash from the workshop’s basement. A few moments later, five yetis came thundering down the hall to North and started talking at once about something the other Guardians couldn’t understand.

“Whatever it is, I promise I didn’t do it.” Jack Frost protested when Bunny glared at him.

Sandy put up a question mark above his head silently asking, “What’s going on?”

Without a word, North gestured to the Guardians to follow him and he ran off to the elevator shaped like a glass ball ornament.

There came a problem when the yetis tried to squeeze into the elevator after the Guardians. It became quite evident that they couldn’t all fit in when Jack yelled out, “I can’t breathe! I’m way too squished!” 

For some reason, though the yetis were brilliant at building things, they were a little slow on the uptake. It took about three minutes for them to realize they’d need to take a second elevator. As the elevators descended to the basement of the North Pole, two more crashes rang out followed by a sharp pinging sound. North was growing more distressed by the second, and still no one else knew what the yetis had said. As soon as the elevator touched down in the basement, everyone burst out the open doors. Tooth immediately zipped over the North and asked him once again what had happened.

“The yetis just kept repeating that the intruder alarm has gone off in one of the storage rooms,” North finally said, “They don’t know who it is yet.”

Jack cringed as he overheard North’s answer. A few months earlier, he had tried to stealthily sneak into the storage rooms to get materials for a prank. The storage rooms in the workshop’s icy basement didn’t have regular doors, in order to prevent stray elves from getting in. Jack learned this the hard way, and after running into the ice walls of the storage room more times than he would like to ever admit, the Guardian of Fun finally learned that an illusion permanently covered special openings in the ice walls that led into the storage rooms.

Now, Jack flew to the entrance of one of the torch-lit hallways and peered down it. Two loud _‘zings’_ sounded, and Jack ducked as red and blue balls of light flew over his head and exploded on one of the ice support columns behind him.

There was a loud rumble, an angry roar, two human screams and then... silence. “Okay, now I’m worried. What the bloody hell was that?” asked Bunny as he hopped over to Jack.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied as he began to cautiously walk down the hallway. He stopped short in surprise as two yetis came down the cold, icy hallway dragging two human bodies.

One of the yetis carried two handguns. The Guardians gathered around, and North began inspecting the odd, silver-colored handguns with immense curiosity while the others stared with interest at the unconscious intruders.

One had blonde hair, wore a yellow shirt, and black pants and boots. The yellow shirt had a delta sign with a star in the middle on the left upper chest. The other person had black hair and wore similar pants and boots but his shirt was blue. The oddest thing about the person wearing the blue shirt (which had the same delta insignia as the others but with an oval shape in its center) was his ears. They were pointy!

“Aye-yi-yi…” North grumbled as he walked over to the knocked out humans with a frown on his face.

“We should take them to the infirmary,” Tooth said glancing pointedly at the yetis. “They do have some nasty welts on their faces.” The yetis shuffled their feet, looking down at the ground with remorse.

A few minutes later, the yetis lay the unconscious humans on two cots in the workshops’ infirmary, and healer yetis began assessing their injuries.

Suddenly, the multicolored jewels on Bunny’s golden gauntlets flared in a brilliant rainbow of blazing light. Bunny’s ears pricked up in alertness, and he tapped the floor twice with his foot, disappearing down into one of his tunnels with a quick farewell call of “Something’s in the warren! Gotta go!”

Jack looked down at Sandy, who was tugging on his pant leg insistently. A multitude of symbols flashed through the air above his head. The Guardian of Dreams seemed distressed.

“Sandy, slow down. I can’t understand you when you’re doing that at, like, the speed of light.” Jack told him. Sandy took a deep breath and nodded with a slight eye roll of annoyance. Then, an image of Bunny’s gauntlet appeared in dreamsand above his head next to an “X” and a clock with the hands moving steadily backwards.

Jack had just recently become proficient at interpreting Sandy’s sand images, after being a Guardian for a year and a half. After staring, intrigued, at the three dreamsand images, Jack cautiously guessed, “The gauntlets…don’t show the time?”

Sandy shook his head.

“The gauntlets aren’t clocks? However obviously.”

Sandy just looked up at the ceiling in exasperation, his shoulder slumping in defeat.

“Ummm…Oh, wait, yes! I think I got it! Bunny’s gauntlet hasn’t done that for a long time!”

This time, Sandy looked back at Jack and nodded with an _‘about time’_ look on his face.

Jack crouched down to Sandy’s eye level, looking briefly back at the other Guardians who were too entrenched in the mystery of the two intruders to notice Sandy and Jack’s conversation. “So, when was the last time this happened? And what happened?” Jack asked quietly.

Sandy formed words _DARK AGES_ above his head with a figure of Pitch Black beside them.

“Oh, the gauntlet hasn’t flared like that since the Dark Ages when you had to defeat Pitch the first time.” Jack said as he began to realize the full extent of the ordeal. After a moment of contemplation, he asked, “So, what exactly does it mean when the gauntlets flare like that?”

Sandy was vaguely able to convey to the winter spirit that it meant Bunny’s warren had been intruded but some kind of large foreign force. That explained why the gauntlets hadn’t alerted Bunny when Sophie Bennett had gotten into the Warren via a snowglobe back in 2012. The magical barriers and shields around the warren recognized the snowglobe portal as a non-threatening magical force (although it had taken the Guardians a little longer to realize that.) Tooth and North eventually wandered out of the room, still discussing the issue of the strange intruders.

Jack sighed with relief. “Finally! I thought we’d never get some peace and quiet in here.” Then he said to Sandy, “I guess the only thing we can do is wait for Bunny to come back, right Sandy?”

The Sandman nodded.

“The yetis can babysit these guys, whoever they are. So, what do you want to do?” Jack asked contemplatively.

Sandy thought for a moment before suddenly bouncing up and down excitedly with a good idea. Ten minutes later, Jack and Sandy were standing in middle of the North Pole’s private movie theater (something that Jack had not known existed until now.)

“Oh my God,” Jack whispered as he turned in a circle, slowly taking it all in; vending machines, the large, comfortable seats, and the huge movie screen.

Sandy flew up to the projection room and Jack followed. The Winter Spirit landed outside its door and almost tripped over a giant piece of coal propping open the door before Sandy flicked on the light.

“Thanks, Sandy! Guess I’m just a little clumsy today. Wait... I’m never clumsy! Why am I clumsy right now? This is not normal!” exclaimed Jack.

Sandy hid his eye roll as he tossed Jack two remotes and gestured to a screen on one of the control panels in the projection room. After turning on the screen, Jack realized that what Sandy had meant to communicate was “Which movie?”

“Awesome!”

The movie Jack picked was not actually a movie at all but a magical live steam of a ballet (because of course North could magically view any performances he wanted from the comfort of his Workshop...if he ever stopped working, that was.) The New York City Ballet performance of "The Nutcracker" was just about to begin. 

A long time ago, Jack reminisced, there had been a ten-year-old girl named Ana Marie who had lived in New York City. He wasn’t sure exactly how long ago it was that she’d been in a smaller, local version of The Nutcracker ballet in Brooklyn for seven years. Jack had always loved watching Ana Marie perform She had been a brilliant ballerina.

After Jack clicked the “Play” button on the control panel in the projection room, he and Sandy raced back to the theater, nearly tumbling over each other into the soft armchairs in their haste. They were just in time to watch the beginning of the live stream and see the curtain open. Sandy had a small heart hovering above his head for the first few minutes— his way of saying that he loved The Nutcracker.

After the live stream ended, the two Guardians ventured back up to the infirmary where Tooth, North, and Bunny were standing next to a third unconscious human. She was wearing a red tunic and had the same delta sign on her chest, this time with a spiral in the middle.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who is this?” asked Jack.

Bunny looked at Jack, saying, “How am I supposed to know? She was most likely on the beach on Easter Island. Evidently, she must have found one of the unstable portals that appear anywhere and everywhere, and take you from one random place to another on Earth. We don’t know why they exist, and they are impossible to control or predict. And before you ask how I know this, it’s because there’s a giant stone Easter Island head in the middle of my warren, along with a pile of sand, and this woman.”

Jack merely raised an eyebrow at the story. Then Sandy asked why the woman was unconscious.

“Well,” Bunny replied, “I really do not know. When she was lying on the ground, she looked at me for one second and then kind of...face planted.”

Tooth sighed. “This is going to be another interesting Advent, isn’t it?” She asked to the room at large.

Jack gave her a half-smile and nodded. "Yup." He said. 

“By the way,” North asked Jack and Sandy, “Where did you go?”

Sandy made a dreamsand picture of a big screen with a few seats in front of it. North nodded in understanding. “Oh good, you showed Jack the theater. I’ve been meaning to do that.” He mused.

“Well, I guess we’d better wait until they wake up. And Sandy, if anyone here falls asleep while they’re waiting, just please, please don’t go into their dreams. Especially mine! I’m still traumatized from the last time you did that to me. I had weird dreams about walking sunflowers for weeks…” Bunny pleaded.

Sandy only grinned back at him ominously.


	2. Strange Tea and Jelly Bean Geysers

The Guardians certainly knew when the three strangers woke up. It was really quite obvious. There was a clatter, a shriek, and the zap of something being fired.

Jack was the first to the infirmary.

As soon as he flew through the doorway, someone yelled, “Stop right there! Don’t move!” Jack found himself at the business end of a futuristic gun. It’s blue light was glaring him in the face.

“Holy crud!” Jack muttered, looking from the blue glow up into the face of the man wearing the yellow-gold shirt. Jack sensed that this was a time for diplomacy, not for freezing mouths shut. He dropped his staff and held up his hands in surrender, noting that all of the healer yetis were lying on the ground unconscious. The woman in the red tunic and the man wearing the blue shirt were both pointing their guns at the yetis.

“Who are you, and where on Earth are we ‘cause this doesn’t look like Earth in 2013.” the man in the yellow-gold shirt asked. Jack gave him a funny look.

“How can you see me?” Jack asked, taking a tiny step back in confusion

“Should I not be able to?” The stranger countered.

Jack shook his head. Suddenly, three mini-fairies – Sera, Baby Tooth, and Kailah – flew up to Jack and whispered in his ear.

“You gave them WHAT?!” Jack exploded, surprising the three strangers. (What the mini-fairies had told Jack was that they had mixed the leaves from the mystery plant that had made them extremely hyper last Advent. After brewing them together as a tea, they slipped three teaspoons into the strangers’ sleeping mouths while the yetis weren’t looking. Which was another concerning feat in itself.)

Before the man who was pointing the gun at Jack’s face could ask what the mini-fairies had said, Jack quickly informed him, “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. Please don’t shoot! These are mini-fairies and they won’t hurt you either. They just, er, told me that they gave you a kind of potion that gives you the ability to see us strange, um, creatures that actually do live on Earth in 2013.”

The three strangers stared at Jack as if he’d grown a second head.

Jack sighed, adding, “Obviously, you’re not from around here. And you really shouldn’t be able to see me. But you do, and you’re here. So, how about we all calm down, put the weapons on the floor, and explain who we are?”

After glancing at each other, the stranger wearing the yellow-gold shirt slowly lowered his gun. “OK. But you go first.”

Jack slowly bent down and picked up his staff, leaning on it gently. “My name is Jack Frost. I am a Guardian of Childhood. The Guardians of Childhood are a group of five immortals who have sworn to protect the children of the world. We immortals have different magical powers. For example, I am the Spirit of Winter, which means that I go around spreading the season of winter. There are other spirits that bring the other seasons. There are also immortal embodiments of many other things. I don’t known how you got here, but I do know that we found you in the basement being dragged by two yetis, you know, those creatures you knocked out. The four other Guardians of Childhood are Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus.”

After some time of the strangers taking it all in, the man with the blue shirt said to Jack, “Thank you for the explanation, Jack Frost. It seems like we started off on the wrong foot, to use a human expression. My name is Spock and while my mother was human, my father was from a distant planet called Vulcan. As odd as this may sound, we are from the future.”

Jack gaped at Spock.

Then the man with the yellow shirt added, “And my name is James Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise. As you’ve heard, we’re from the future where there are starships that have gone out and explored deep space to find different planets, such as Vulcan, with other life forms. The reason we ended up here in this building that is apparently on Earth’s magnetic North Pole is because we had to come back from the future to get two polar bears. In the future, polar bears are extinct so we had to come to the past. On the Enterprise, there is something called a transporter that enables you travel immediately from one place to another.”

Then the woman wearing the red tunic spoke, “Yes, we entered coordinates into the transporter’s computers to take us to the North Pole. There must have been a glitch in Enterprise’s transporter because I was transported to the South Pole while Kirk and Spock were transported to the North Pole. There is one more person on our team who is still missing. His name is Pavel Chekov and he must have been transported somewhere else in the world! Oh my name is Uhura.”

It took Jack a few moments to realize that the other Guardians had not shown up. He was glad that was able to begin to sort out the situation for the moment but surely North, Tooth, and Sandy would have come by now if they’d heard noise from the infirmary.

“So, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before,” said Jack, “but this is the workshop of Santa Claus, also known as North. Speaking of North, he should probably be here by now but since he isn’t, I can give you a tour as we look for him.”

Soon, Jack, Kirk, Uhura and Spock were wandering down the hallways of the workshop calling out for North. Spock was staring perplexed at the many colorful, odd toys around them while Uhura and Kirk seemed delighted. Both smiled as memories of childhood stories about good St. Nicholas arose. Jack grinned, realizing that no mortal adult had probably ever stepped a foot into North’s workshop since it was built.

Suddenly, Kirk tripped over an elf, fell into a yeti, and crashed to the floor. A shout of rage echoed through the hallway.

“That was North!” Jack shouted as he turned to look down another hallway. “Are you OK?” he asked Kirk, who nodded as he scrambled to his feet, trying not to look too embarrassed about his fall. The yeti that Kirk had fallen into growled at them before ambling back down the way he had come.

Kirk was about to ask what it was he’d tripped over when Jack flew down a different hallway in the direction of the shout. Making a quick decision, Kirk, Uhura, and Spock hurried after him. They ended up in the testing section of the workshop, where prototypes of toys were tested for durability, longevity, and functionality. The entire room was filled with jelly beans, which seemed to continuously stream like a geyser from a shaking cardboard box in the center of the room.

Jack flung himself out of the way to avoid being trampled by ten yetis scrambling out the door. Moving to stand in front of the door where he could see the box, Jack raised his staff and froze the geyser of jellybeans. North, unfortunately, was in the way and got frozen, too.

The ice statue that was North was holding up his trademark Santa coat but it was no longer red. The coat had somehow been dyed a hideous overcooked-pea green, and someone had done a horrible job of gluing two angel-like wings of autumn leaves and branches to its back.

Suddenly, there was a tapping sound from under the frozen jelly beans. “Hello! Can someone get me out of here? Hello? Anyone there?” A voice shouted from a few feet away from the jellybean box. Uhura, although she was shocked, leaned closer and tried to decipher who had spoken.

She put one foot out, testing the ice covering the jellybeans before tip-toeing cautiously over to where the voice had come from. “Chekov? Is that you?” The communications officer asked, as she tapped on the ice with one booted toe again.

“Yes! Yes! It’s me and I’d rather not have death by jelly beans,” Chekov called out.

Uhura heard Jack whisper “Oops!” behind her. The winter spirit lightly knocked his staff against the iced jellybeans covering the floor, causing several fissures to open in the ice so that Uhuru could help Chekhov to get out of his cold, colorful prison. Jack also gently tapped the ice statue encasing North, breaking it so the Guardian of Wonder could explain the whole mess. While Jack was doing this, Kirk, Spock, and Uhura explained to Chekov what had happened, transporter malfunctions and all.

Just as the ice around North’s mouth broke and he was able to finish the word he’d been speaking when he was instantly frozen, there came a horrifying cracking sound from all around them. Jack leapt up into the air in surprise. “Guys!’ he yelled, “You may not have noticed but the floor just got warmer. And if the floor is warmer, the ice is melting. So we need to figure out what just happened underneath us because when the ice melts, this volcano of jellybeans will explode again. I won’t be able to freeze it fast enough though, because there’s something pretty warm somewhere under our feet.” Jack explained, pointing to the floor.


	3. Here Be Dragons

The ice made another deep booming sound and the box in the middle of the room shook. “Oh great Tchaikovsky! Could it be that the testing department put one too many pinches of awakening powder into the model ice dragon?” North exclaimed, becoming more concerned by the minute.

_(Back in July, Jack and North had combined their magical powers to create a twelve-foot tall dragon from a huge block of ice. They didn't know at the time that the dragon would become a major problem.)_

North hastily threw his dyed coat at Jack, who failed to catch it. Instead, the coat landed on his head, completely covering him.

As he struggled to get out from underneath it, Jack thought that once again, advent was not his favorite time of year. Strange things always happened to him. Last year, he got turned into a bunny. This year, there was a dragon loose on the third floor. Next year, who knows what could happen? He could get sucked into one of Father Time’s hidden portals and end up in Han Dynasty-era China! Jack shuddered, considering what the consequences of time traveling like that might be.

When he finally got up and kicked the offending coat aside, Kirk asked him, “Do these kind of things always happen here?”

“No,” Jack sighed. “They can be much, much worse. In fact, you’re lucky you didn’t come here in a year when some dark spirit like Pitch Black tries to take over the world.” With that said, and before the jelly beans fully thawed, Jack and the four visitors from the future raced out the door and slammed it behind them.

No one liked that the destructive occurrences in North’s workshop were becoming more and more frequent. Knowing that Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Chekov were behind him, Jack paused in the middle of the hallway, raising his hand toward a slightly open window. “It’s no wonder that Bunny complained about the North Pole being cold all the time! The Yetis always left open the windows,” Jack thought.

The reason the Yetis left the windows open was to let out the smoke created by workshop mishaps in the Toy Testing Department. Realizing this, Jack’s thoughts returned to earth when he remembered that the ice dragon that he’d created with North was in the testing department. “Oh, right!” Jack muttered, “the North Wind.”

As the futuristic visitors watched Jack with curiosity, he reached out with his mind and probed the frozen tundra of the North Pole silently beckoning the North Wind. With a roar that the entire workshop could hear, the North Wind shot toward Jack’s outstretched hand. As the roar grew louder, Uhura yelped with fear and covered her ears with her hands. The mighty force of the wind could have blown North’s workshop off its icy cliff.

There was nothing normal about this event. Jack closed his fist suddenly, just when everyone thought their eardrums were about to burst. Through the windows' tiny opening, the North Wind entered as a gentle breeze. The others saw Jack open his hand slightly and tug on thin air as though it were a rope. “Come on, Wind,” Jack whispered. “Let’s go slay a dragon!”

The other Guardians had left for a while to do their jobs, and planned to return soon to figure out what was going to happen next. Tooth was the last one back.

When she arrived in the Globe Room, she was certainly in for a bit of a shock. Sandy, Bunny, and a quarter of the workshop yetis were cowering behind three overturned armchairs, four giant bookshelves, and a small table. Tooth was about to ask what on Earth was going on when Sandy quickly made a ‘ _sshhhing’_ motion at her.

“What?” Tooth mouthed.

Suddenly, the entire group turned to face Tooth, and froze with wide eyes fixed on something behind her. Sandy formed a dreamsand ball the size of a beach ball and prepared to throw it in her direction.

Now feeling a little scared and confused, Tooth tensed as she felt a blast of icy breath on the back of her neck.

Then Sandy threw his beach ball.

“No, wait! I’m—“ Tooth shouted as she ducked to avoid being hit by the ball sailing over her head. She turned around just in time to witness a twelve foot tall dragon made entirely of ice crash to the ground, sent forcefully to sleep by the dreamsand beach ball.

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the sleeping giant. “Is there something I’m missing here?” Tooth asked nervously.

“You see, Tooth...” Bunny began as he launched into the story. As it turned out, the yetis had been trying to develop a magical powder that they could pour into the dragon’s mouth. This powder would be used to create cold fire that wouldn’t melt the dragon or hurt anyone. If anyone got hit by the cold fire, only a tickling sensation would be felt. The Yetis wanted to do this for show, bringing out the ice dragon at parties and have it spew fire, not causing any damage.

The mixture for the cold fire powder consisted of: cold powder, summer powder, and waking powder. A pinch of awakening powder was added to allow the dragon to open its mouth, spew fire, and then close its mouth again. In this way, the dragon couldn’t move its body or fly. Then, the Yetis added too much awakening powder – WAY too much. In fact, they spilled almost the entire bottle of it. This is what enabled the dragon to chase everyone around the North Pole.

It was only when the dragon finally spewed fire directly at the Guardians and their visitors that the Yetis realized yet another problem with their cold fire powder. The elves had switched the cold powder with the dimension powder. The cold powder and the dimensional travel used to create North's snowglobes powder look alike, but their texture was subtly different. The Yetis hadn’t checked the feel of the powder that they measured for the dragon.

Oops.

When the dragon spewed fire at some of the Guardians and their visitors, all six of them disappeared in an explosion of blue-purple light.


	4. Dammit Jim, I'm...Santa Claus?

It can really be quite painful to get ejected out of an inter-dimensional portal. With the snowglobe portals, you could just sail safely through, but with dimensional portals, it’s like being shot out of a cannon while being simultaneously squeezed through a hole the size of single piece of spaghetti. North, Jack, and their Starfleet visitors got to experience the cannon version first hand. All six were flung out of the dimension portal and landed in a painful heap. 

Jack’s staff hit Kirk in the face. “Ouch!” Kirk exclaimed as he rubbed his right temple. Jack cringed apologetically After untangling themselves, everyone looked around. The only thing any of them could think of was “Where are we?” and “Wow!”

They were on a golden bridge that looked like it was made of stardust. It was suspended above a huge river that appeared to be made of golden liquid. In fact, everything, including the ceiling that appeared to be about one hundred feet above them, was made of gold. 

It seemed like they were in a huge chasm, but not quite. The walls were sloped, forming a smooth dome around them. The walls sparkled like golden snow falling through the night. At the other end of the long suspension bridge, there was a double door with large ring handles. 

“What planet is this?” Uhura asked. Jack picked up his staff and shrugged. He’d never been here before and he certainly didn’t want to be here, because of the temperature. 

Imagine a summer day around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Then imagine a cold snowy night in the middle of winter that is about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Those summer days and winter nights don’t mix very well and since Jack is the winter and the place they had landed was as hot as mid-summer, it led to a very uncomfortable Jack Frost. 

When North told the visitors that he, too, did not know where they were, Spock suggested that since they could not go back the way they’d come (there was a wall behind them after all), that they should investigate what was behind the double doors at the other end of the bridge. 

Everyone agreed that this was the best and only option. After Kirk tossed his phaser onto the dreamsand bridge to see if it would hold its weight, the group began to cautiously make its way across it. “What is this stuff?” Chekov asked, poking at a golden column. Wherever his index finger touched, that part of the support column dissipated into golden particles. After a few moments, the particles would collect and coalesce again. 

“I think—You know I believe that it’s dreamsand,” said North, looking at the same column. 

“You know, that sand the Sandman has and is made of,” Jack added. 

Chekov nodded and made a mental note about the dreamsand. The group slowly advanced in silence, glancing down at the golden river. Suddenly, there was a thump behind them. Just as they were turning around, there was also a flash in the same spot. North was the first to break the silence. 

“Jack, oh no—Udaya! This...is a very rare honor.” 

Udaya was the spirit of Light. Standing before North and the visitors from the future, she wore a billowing golden sleeveless dress. A golden circlet with tiny glowing gems adorning it rested on her head. An aura of power permeated the air around her. 

It wasn’t that North wasn’t glad to Udaya. In fact, he’d never seen the being who was central in every legend of the immortals. The reason for his distress was this: Udaya was standing next to Jack Frost who was lying unconscious on the bridge, overcome by the heat. 

There were some issues back at North’s workshop, as well. The dragon had been put to sleep and was locked in a room on the second floor of the North Pole. This was, however, only a temporary solution to an angry, magical dragon that can send you to another dimension. Luckily, before they’d locked the door and shoved half a dozen shelves in front of it, Sandy had put a pile of dreamsand next to the dragon’s nose. 

Tooth, Bunny, and Sandy were having troubling figuring out what to do once the dragon woke up and began to break out of the armory. “It’s not like we can destroy the dragon by hitting over the head with a javelin or even throwing warm water on it,” exclaimed Tooth. “Jack told us that after he and North had created the dragon, the Yetis put a spell on the dragon so that it could never melt or break.” 

“Not to mention that Christmas is in two days,” grumbled Bunny, looking around the Globe Room on the fourth floor of the North Pole’s massive mountain enclave. His gaze fixated on the twinkling lights of the Globe of Belief. After Easter in 2012, no Guardian could afford to lose the belief of any believer from unnatural causes, such as Pitch. 

Sandy make a dreamsand Christmas tree of dreamsand over his head. The three Guardians sank back into their thoughts, each trying to figure out a way to get North, Jack, and the visitors back in time for Christmas. Their grace period was suddenly shattered by a roar so loud that a lion would have curled into a ball and cried for Mommy! 

Four screams pierced the air as a terrifying rumble sounded from the second floor. “Bloody curse of the groundhog!” Bunny cried out as he yanked his boomerangs out of their holsters. He jumped over the Globe Room balcony, swung from the third floor railing, dropping down to the second floor. 

Sandy and Tooth flew down and joined Bunny on the second floor. “Lieutenant Dallas! What did Engineer Scott tell you about not messing with our transporter?” A male voice yelled angrily from the hallway leading to the armory. Since Tooth, Sandy, and Bunny were around the corner, they couldn’t see who was shouting. Judging by the rumbles and quaking of the walls around them, the dragon was clearly getting frustrated with being contained. 

“I didn’t mess it up, I fixed it, McCoy!” Another voice yelled in response to the first. 

Just as the three Guardians began to rush to the hallway, four humans sprinted around the corner and crashed into them. 

“What the hell are you?” shouted one of men as he struggled to his feet. The man wearing a blue shirt stared in puzzlement. 

“Mate, I’m the Easter Bunny. Who are you, and how did you get here?” Bunny demanded. 

The man stumbled, somewhat unsteady on his feet after the collision. That was when Tooth noticed that the four people in front of her wore clothing that was similar to that worn by the two strangers that the Yetis had found in the basement two days before. 

It was 3:59 a.m. on Christmas Eve Day. After misunderstandings, flying objects, and general mayhem, the four new strangers revealed themselves as Lieutenant Everett Dallas, Ensign Sabrina Olson, and Commander Austen Reynolds. The man in the blue shirt was Dr. Leonard McCoy. All four were also from the future and worked on the USS Enterprise. Somehow, they could see the Guardians, yet the mini fairies hadn’t given them any of the ‘seeing-spirits’ potion. There would be time to dwell on that later though.   
  
Sandy again knocked the ice dragon unconscious. Then the four new visitors from the future and the three other Guardians helped North load his sleigh with gifts for the world’s children. The Enterprise’s transporter had been only partially repaired when Dr. McCoy (also known as Bones) and his party beamed down to the North Pole. Communication capabilities had also been off-line but were now repaired. One of the transporter technicians told Bones that the transporter was not quite ready. 

While loading North’s sleigh, Bunny was hit on the head with a long stick. To be more precise, it was Jack Frost’s staff. “What in the world?” Bunny exclaimed, holding his throbbing right ear as he looked around at the offending staff that had given him such a blow. Looking up at the ceiling, he noticed a strange volume of golden sparks floating around near the ceiling. Bunny backed up a few feet warily, still holding an armload of presents. 

“Bunny, are you okay?” Ensign Olson asked as she walked through the door pulling a bag of presents behind her. Bunny was about to explain that he didn’t like what he saw on the ceiling when a virtual waterfall of dreamsand cascaded into the sleigh. Bunny and Ensign Olson ducked. 

A loud crash and a few moans of “Ouch!” sounded out. 

Bunny’s eyes were still closed when he heard someone say, “Well, that was fun! And I will never think of the Sun, or any star, the same way again.” 

“Yes, it was truly…fascinating.”

Bunny dared to open one eye. What he saw made him spring up in surprise and joy. “North! You’re back! I don’t have to deliver presents! Where were you? And whoa! What happened to Jack? Hey! You’re the ones we found earlier!” Bunny’s wide green eyes took in the almost comical sight in front of him as he talked. 

North, some of the visitors from the future, and Jack were nearly buried in drifts of dreamsand in the sleigh. Everyone except Jack was somehow awake. 

Once Bunny and Ensign Olson helped them all out of the sleigh, Bunny asked to hear the entire story of what had happened to them. North explained how he, Jack, Kirk, Uhura and Spock had ended up in Udaya’s palace on the Sun. 

Jack had collapsed from the heat, and time passes differently on the sun. Also, Udaya told them that they just needed to sprinkle some dreamsand on themselves and dream about returning to the North Pole and they’d be there. Soon, all the other Guardians and visitors had gathered around the sleigh. 

Bones was glad to see that, once again, Kirk had somehow survived another completely crazy adventure. He gave a significant amount of credit for this to Spock and Uhura. A few hours later, once the dreamsand was cleared off the sleigh, Jack woke up. North was running around, making sure everything was in perfect order. Bones was paged by the transporter room technician asking if Kirk and his companions had been located. Relieved to hear that they had been, he informed then Bones that they could be beamed up to the Enterprise. 

After saying goodbye to the Guardians of Childhood, the crew members beamed back to the Enterprise. Bones had never been so glad to be back on their starship. After their departure, North left to deliver his gifts to Earth’s eastern hemisphere, wearing his overcooked-pea-green dyed coat. As he sleigh took flight, the other Guardians heard two terrifying booms, one from the testing department and one from the second floor armory. 

“Oh, no!” Tooth said with horror, turning to her companions. 

“The dragon!” Bunny gasped, running to the Globe Room banister. Looking down, he saw a jet of flame coming from a hallway below. The dragon had escaped from the armory. “Oh, no,” Bunny whispered, “Not this again!” 

“The jellybean geyser! It’s probably thawed by now!” Jack said. He flew down the hallway toward the testing department where a certain box that had previously been spewing jellybeans was now spewing enormous amounts of whipped cream. 

Jack had to wonder where it was all coming from? A candy store? A whipped-cream factory? The Moon? 

And how on earth could it be stopped?!

**_(Meanwhile, back on the USS Enterprise...)_ **

“Captain Kirk, you’re alive! Where were you all? Did you get the polar bears, sir?” Lieutenant Riley asked from the transporter room doorway as the seven missing officers finally reappeared on the pad. 

Taking a second to reorient himself from the North Pole to the starship, Captain James Kirk shook dreamsand out of his hair. Then he looked at Lt. Riley, and a mixture of worry and confusion passed briefly over his face as he said, “Get the what?” 

“The polar bears, Captain? The reason we went back in time—”

“We were a little bit occupied fighting ice dragons, being buried by jellybeans, accidentally being sent to the Sun by the dragon’s magical inter-dimensional fire and—“ Chekov began energetically naming the many adventures that had happened in the week they’d been gone. 

“—and saving children’s belief in Santa Claus. Does it seem like we had time to find polar bears?” Bones finished defensively. 

Lieutenant Kevin Riley laughed and shook his head. However, after a few moments where no one contradicted the good doctor, the lieutenant felt the need to ask, “You’re serious?” 

Everyone from Commander Spock to Ensign Olson and Bones all nodded. 

**The End (for now)**

**~**

**The Guardians & Co. WILL RETURN IN ADVENT TALES 2014!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, things happened. Stuff got crazy.  
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Hope it made you laugh and/or at least smile!


End file.
